Russian drone strike kills Ukrainian first responders working at scene of earlier attack

April 4 (UPI) -- Russian attack drones hit residential districts in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv overnight killing at least four people and injuring 10 others, authorities said.

Three of the dead were emergency services personnel killed in a secondary strike as they searched for survivors beneath the rubble at the site of the initial drone strike, said the city's mayor, Ihor Terekhov.

"Confirmed information: three rescuers were killed and another was wounded as a result of the repeated attack on the strike site," Terehov posted on social media

Kharkiv Regional Military Administration head Oleh Syniehubov said in a Telegram post that the fourth person killed was a 69-year-old female civilian.

"A 49-year-old man is in serious condition, other patients are in moderate and fair condition," he wrote.

The emergency workers died when two drones struck just before 2 a.m. local time as they were working in a residential area about 60 minutes after an earlier strike damaged houses and a 14-story apartment building, injuring two people.

In all, three high-rise buildings, a hospital building, three firetrucks and two ambulances were damaged in the attacks, according to Syniehubov.

Local air defenses said they had shot down 11 drones as the province bordering Russia came under repeated attack following strikes earlier Wednesday that injured a woman in Merefa and a man in a village 75 miles southwest of Kharkiv and an attack Tuesday that killed a man and injured a boy aged 11.

The region has come under almost daily attack for weeks, assaults that have intensified following a Russian TV broadcast by Russian nationalists last week urging Russian forces to "erase Kharkiv from the face of the earth."

The city's power infrastructure was seriously damaged on March 22 by a massive aerial assault on the east and southeast of the country that destroyed electrical substations and damaged the Zmiivska power plant leaving 150,000 people in Kharkiv without power.

Scheduled power outages remain in place as authorities and utility suppliers repair the damage with Kharkiv residents going without power for 4-8 hours a day, according to Terekhov.

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